Samsung delivers NYK HERMES (13,208 teu), sixth of ten neo-panamaxes

Samsung Shipbuilding and Heavy Industries has delivered the 13,208 teu vessel NYK HERMES, the sixth unit in a series of ten neo-overpanamax ships ordered in March 2011 by OOCL. The new ship follows the OOCL CHONGQING, delivered in June.

While six of the ships will come on stream for OOCL, four of them – including the NYK HERMES – are to be chartered out to Japan’s Nippon Yusen Kaisha. Since OOCL and NYK are partners in the Grand Alliance and G6 Alliance, the vessels will nevertheless trade alongside each other in the joint G6 Asia to Europe network.

The new NYK HERMES is to join in early August the G6-Alliance’s Far East to Europe service ‘Loop 4’, where she will replace the 10,070 teu APL LE HAVRE which migrates on to the G6 ‘Loop 7’.

OOCL’s and NYK’s new flag ships are 366,47m long and 48.20m (19 tows) wide neo´-panamax ships. The type is powered by an MAN B&W12S90ME-C9.2 main engine that is electronically down-rated to only 54,200 kW. While this is by far the lowest power output installed on any neo-panamax ship so far, the small main engine makes sense in an environment dominated by slow steaming an almost all mainline loops.